NO on CCUSD’s K-3 override

Rich Bail | Scottsdale
We should all vote NO on CCUSD's K-3 override. In addition to all the usual reasons for financial restraint, the current national economic picture seems to DEMAND restraint in taxation and spending.

It is premature at best to ask for a new K-3 override. Voters approved the current seven-year override in 2005, meaning there are still four more years left, and the state will continue for years to fund all-day kindergarten.

CCUSD spent over $600,000 from the state's all-day kindergarten funds to provide pay increases for non-classroom staff as well as teachers. Can district taxpayers trust CCUSD to use the proposed override wisely?

CCUSD does not know its funding needs four or five years from now. In the past, they have planned for significant student increases that did not occur. Would it not be wiser to wait and see if an override is needed?

Also, district consultants project a flattening enrollment of K-3 students which was confirmed by the district's enrollment figures showing a growth of just eight students in the last two years; 95 percent less than originally projected. And the board now seems to agree that in the near term at least, growth overall will be nearly flat.

Almost half the board and more than half the staff have resigned. They need time to regroup and reconsider future plans. They do not need a commitment for more money now!
We should all vote NO on CCUSD's K-3 override renewal. We can reconsider the need in another few years, long before existing funding runs out.

Racial preferences at law schools "should give Americans the creeps"

Clint Bolick | Director of the Goldwater Institute Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation
An initiative that would have banned racial and ethnic preferences in Arizona governments will not appear on the ballot this year, but evidence of the need for such action continues to grow with the release today of two studies that document massive racial preferences at the state's two public law schools.

The reports by the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) examine racial and ethnic data for applicants to the University of Arizona and Arizona State University law schools in 2006 and 2007. They found that the odds of a black applicant's admission to ASU were 1,100 times greater than a white applicant's; and 250 times greater at the University of Arizona. Out of roughly 75 similar studies conducted across the country, the preferences at ASU "were the largest ever found by CEO."

The ASU report found that among applicants in 2007 with the median black LSAT and grade-point averages, over 98 percent of black applicants were admitted compared to fewer than 10 percent of whites. Hispanic applicants with the same credentials were admitted far less often than blacks, but far more often than whites.

Law schools should grant admission based either on purely objective criteria or special individual characteristics, without using race or ethnicity as a proxy for diversity or disadvantage. Moreover, in an increasingly multi-ethnic society, it is absurd to force people to check a racial or ethnic box that will determine in large measure their opportunities. As CEO's Roger Clegg aptly put it, "The whole enterprise is something that should give Americans the creeps."

True equal opportunity requires expanding educational opportunities at the K-12 level, not pretending that certain students are more qualified than they are. Ending government's power to classify and discriminate among people on the basis of race is a good way to hasten that process.

Pullen to Congress: “Scrap the Code!”

Via e-mail
Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen today called for the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress to replace the federal tax system with a simpler alternative, such as either the flat tax or the “fair tax.”

“Democrat Congressman Charlie Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House, has just hired forensic accountants to figure out how and why he failed to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars in taxes,” Pullen said. “The system is so bad, so broken and so beyond hope that even the people who inflicted this tax code on America can’t seem to pay their taxes on time – not the right amount and not on time.

“American citizens and companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year just trying to comply with the tax code,” said Pullen, himself a CPA and former partner with Deloitte & Touche. “This is money which could be used to feed children, to create jobs, cure diseases, educate or retrain Americans. Instead, it is spent by people just trying to avoid an audit from the IRS.”

“The flat tax would replace millions of pages of federal tax code with a simple, single-rate income tax that everyone pays,” Pullen said. “The Fair Tax would abolish the federal income tax altogether and replace it with a national sales tax.

“When the Democrat chairman of the committee that writes the tax code can’t pay his taxes, either he’s a felon who never intended to do so, or the system is so far gone that this Congress owes it to the American people to actually do something about it,” Pullen said.

“Just once, I’d like to see this Democrat Congress stop serving itself and start serving the people who elected it.”

Why I am voting for John McCain!”

Dr. M. Sidney Wallace | Columnist at www.Gulf1.com
In the first presidential debate on Friday evening, I was totally unimpressed with each of the two presidential candidates. On one side of the screen there was a tall dark babbling idiot that looked and spoke more like Alfred E. Newman than a leading candidate. What was even worse was the number of times that he kept saying, I agree with John on this issue. He had absolutely no original ideas on anything happening on the face of planet Earth.

On the other side of the stage was an experienced senior individual who wanted to reach out to the other side to form a consensus and move the nation forward. In my younger days I studied a lot of natural sciences, especially physics. One of the first rules of motion is that a body will go in the direction determined by the force being applied to it. If you kick a ball to the left it will move to the left. If you kick a ball to the right, it will move to the right.

However, when you kick a ball equally from the left and right at the same time, the ball will not move and you will fall on your ass.

So now, we as a nation are left trying to determine who will lead the United States for the next four years and beyond. Do we vote for a blithering idiot that wants to turn America into a socialist state where everything belongs to the government and not the individual? Or do we vote for an honorable old man that wants to make everyone happy by letting the socialist make the laws of the land.

Well here is the way I have made up my mind. I cannot vote for Obama because he goes against everything I have been taught from birth. He wants to totally destroy the United States from within. He wants a United States like his father’s homeland of Kenya. He wants every individual to have his own thatched roof hut to sleep in. He wants every village to have a whole gaggle of witch doctors to dance around camp fires to ward off evil spirits. He believes that his government bureaucrats can best determine what each individual needs.

I will vote for John McCain for one single reason. That reason is his age. Now on the surface your might assume that I am impressed with his over seventy years in age with a store house of knowledge and experiences stored away. He has been all around the world and knows almost every world leader on a first name basis. But that is not why I am voting for McCain. I can tell you why I am voting for McCain because of his age in two words. Sarah Palin.

Border Patrol Agents

B. Monroe | Cave Creek
If there were any two prisoners President Bush should pardon on his exit from office it is the two Border Patrol agents Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose Compean. I hope Mrs. Ramos is petitioning for their release. This is probably the biggest travesty in American history, though we are breaking records on a daily basis on Capital Hill.

Focus on District 8

Dave Stoddard | Hereford, Arizona
Over the course of several years, I stood in dismay as I watched our former Congressman, Jim Kolbe, cast the concerns of District 8 aside in favor of special interests, lobbyists and NAFTA. Kolbe left office a millionaire.

When Gabrielle Giffords took Kolbe's seat, I hoped for a breath of fresh air. We finally had a fresh, young politician uncorrupted by Washington politics who would represent the people in District 8.

Recently Washington bureaucrats played the "panic card" to bail out bad management on Wall Street. "Something must be done immediately. There is no time to waste debating or considering alternatives," they wailed. "Main Stream America can't buy a car because of the credit crunch," they said. All the while I continued to get solicitations in the mail for credit cards and signature loans up to a $30,000 credit line.

On Sept. 29, Gabrielle Giffords voted against a $700 Billion Wall Street Fat Cat bailout, supposedly to protect the taxpayers. I was elated!

On Oct. 3, Giffords voted in favor of a $850 Billion Wall Street bailout. The difference between a $700 Billion bailout and a $850 Billion bailout is $150 Billion in pork. What happened to the taxpayers, Ms. Giffords? Were you bought by the pork? Did the threat by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to withdraw your support intimidate you? Will you or your friends and family benefit from any of that pork?

Ms. Giffords is in her first term. It didn't take her long to lose focus on the people in District 8. Now we are on the hook for $850 Billion that benefits Washington bureaucrats, hedge fund holders, foreign investors and banks that made bad decisions.

Ignorance on Calvin Terrell

Vincent Chien | Cave Creek
Once again, some of the parents in this town shine through with their ignorance and bigoted beliefs, and in this week's case, on Calvin Terrell.

As a student at Cactus Shadows, I went to that assembly and saw for myself the brilliance in his words and his virtuosic delivery. However, as there always are, some people misinterpreted the intentions of that speech, especially the parents, who only got the "mouth-to-mouth" version of that assembly.

I'm not sure if Lisa [Linda] Bentley was trying to keep the article unbiased or biased, but it certainly gave off a bad vibe about the important topics Calvin speaks of. When Calvin says that there exists racism and bigotry, he doesn't mean your son or daughter is close-minded. Just because someone says your name doesn't mean they're talking to you. Thinking that is vanity. He's saying that close-mindedness exists without direct implications.

What he is implying is that because it exists, we should do something about it, and not be vegetables on the couch, or as he would say, be a warrior. How are those categorizations controversial? They simply acknowledge the fact that there are people in this world who lack virtuous ambitions. Of course, with the population of Cave Creek being 92 percent white, we don't see much of what Calvin talks about, blissfully unaware of our world.

Also, next time a parent decides to call an inspirational speaker "trash," be aware of the fact that your kid wasn't forced to go to that assembly. Teachers gave their students the choice to not go to the assembly if they didn't want to. Either the kids didn't tell the parent, the kid didn't know, or they're just using this as an extra kick in their argument against Calvin Terrell.

P.S. While having someone from NASA, Intel, or the military give a speech is a good idea, Cactus Shadows, as well as the middle schools, have already done that before and from what I saw from other students, we're not particularly interested in assemblies like those.

Democrats – the child inside; Republicans – compelled to grow up

Tony Venuti | Tucson Host of “Beyond Puke”, KFNX 1100AM
Children are completely self-absorbed. A young child, experiencing the sights and sounds of the world for the first time, has no point of reference other than himself.

Today it's just as likely you'll hear a fully-grown man or woman whining, "I want what I want, and I want it NOW!"

Where did this sense of entitlement come from?

Permissive parents, toxic teachers and a MediaOcracy that rewards mediocrity are a few of the culprits, but the Democrats are mostly to blame.

The Democratic welfare state actively DISCOURAGES people from being accountable by rewarding laziness and greed. The government is essentially telling people on welfare that THEY are not responsible for THEIR predicament, and that they are incapable of pulling THEMSELVES up by their own bootstraps. The Democratic welfare state has reduced millions of Americans to a state of drooling helplessness. Instead of encouraging people to be thankful for the blessings in their lives, they are telling people to relax and let the government (meaning those of us who are productive taxpayers) take care of their troubles.

All hope is not lost. Republicans instinctively develop an "attitude of gratitude," and they're happier people for it. They enjoy the rewards of their hard work BECAUSE THEY EARNED THEM! Republicans don't seek out charity, and they rarely accept it if offered.

Republicans, like our great Arizona Senator John McCain, believe in an America where anyone can achieve their dreams, if only they work hard enough. A Democrat's dream involves the next big government check they're going to get, and how they're going to blow the money.

The Democrats' parents spoiled them when they were young, and sheltered them from the rigors of life. Talk about children raising children! These spoiled brats don't see and don't care how their comfortable lives came about. They think money grows on trees!

Since when did poverty become a noble pursuit? It's Beyond Puke!

Bottom line: for the Democrats, misery loves company, and they want the whole country to be as miserable as they are.

What they'll never understand is that the Democratic welfare state has created a psychology of dependency among the poor, which has evolved into a sense that they are entitled to be taken care of. Those of us who chart our own courses in life are stuck with the bill.

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